Additional information can be found in Simpson’s Wikipedia page, and in the eulogy on pages 203-224 of John Rhey Thompson’s Burden Bearing and Other Sermons (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1905). He is also the subject of two biographies: George R. Crooks’ The Life of Bishop Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1890) and Robert Donald Clark’s The Life of Matthew Simpson (New York: Macmillan, 1956).
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Simpson User Guide
Robert H. Ellison
The User Guide for the Library of Appalachian Preaching is a Google Sheet that can be searched, sorted, and downloaded for offline use.
This part of the Guide provides information about Simpson's sermons and addresses. It includes the title, scripture text, date and place the discourse was delivered (if known), and so on. This information is available in the master list of sermons as well.
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Sermons by Bishop Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church
Matthew Simpson
The title page indicates that these sermons were “edited from short-hand reports by George R. Crooks, D.D.” As he notes in his Editor’s Preface, the “reports” were done by someone working for a Methodist periodical he edited, and he did the “work of revision” to get them ready for publication. That work, Crooks writes, was “done with a free hand,” but his goal was always “to preserve, in the reproduction, the intensity which was so marked a feature of their delivery” (p. v).
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Funeral Address Delivered at the Burial of President Lincoln: At Springfield, Illinois, May 4, 1865
Matthew Simpson
According to a 1914 article in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Simpson was a champion of the Union, and a friend and confidant of Lincoln. The relationship between the two “was no doubt influential in deciding the family and the Cabinet to request the Bishop’s services at the President’s funeral” (p. 63).
